I am not arguing that coherence is given from the mind. The mind just perceives coherence in the experience. — MoK

Then you are contradicting yourself. Since before you had said that the brain, the subject, the experience made of what the senses give us something coherent. And you did so by denying that you were talking about a tabula rasa.

Don't bother. You really believe that thoughts, feelings, intentions and purposes travel through the air when two people talk to each other. Imagine a tape recording where something you say is recorded. You have the tape and you literally believe that there are thoughts, emotions and so on on the tape. That is a type of mentalism and magical thinking that I do not share and is patently false.

By one agent interpreting the ink and sounds' forms in addition to discerning whence they originated and thereby understanding the intentions of the agent(s) from which these inks and sounds were resultant. — javra

If you look closely at what you have said, in no case is there a transmission of something. You speak of indirect relations as that of an agent presupposing what another agent means. But as it happens you are simply inferring from the ink and sound, but you never get inside the mind of the other agent, so to speak. Since there is no such thing as passing from one head to another, you have to infer from the ink and sound (and also from its context), which implies an active role for both. Here inferring is nothing other than creating meaning for itself which we indirectly link to another agent. But there is nothing that is transmitted.

From my point of view even the notion of transmission is problematic. Intentions and thoughts do not travel through the air. The only thing we have at hand as listeners and readers is ink and sound. So how can anything be transmitted? The thing is that nothing is transmitted. When we open our mouths to emit sounds to a listener what we do is cause meaning effects in that listener, causing the listener to invent meaning for himself. But nothing is transmitted. That meaning that is invented by the listener may be in communion with our meaning, but then it is a case of coincidence in meanings. In this sense sound and ink have an active role in the creation of meaning, because they are direct causes.

I have no problem with an intention being the cause of the characteristics of something written in ink. But it is one thing to be the cause and another to be the ghost in the ink or in the sound. Since the sound comes out of our mouth the intention is left behind.

If there is ghost in the ink it means that the intention and the purpose are transmitted without any imperfection or defect. So the listener or reader receives the intention, purpose and meaning completely, accurately and absolutely clear without any distortion.

There is a 'ghost in the ink' — Darkneos

End of discussion. :meh:

Wouldn't this "ghost in the ink" then be the intentioning of the agent which produced the ink forms on the paper? — javra

Yes, it would. But that is precisely what does not hold. If intentions and purposes were somehow in the ink (for me that is pure fantasy) there would be no possibility of misunderstanding. In this case we are talking about the materiality of the signs, the sounds uttered, the ink, etc.... From a materialistic point of view, mine, there is no possibility that intentions travel through the air or are inside the ink. That is mentalism.

But misunderstandings are a fact of life. Which implies that if we accept the materialist thesis that denies that kind of mentalism we must assume that the medium, the sound, the ink, etc, has some independence with respect to purpose and intentionality, and an active role in the creation of meaning for a receiver (the hearer, the reader, etc).

In fact the purpose is absent in the note. I repeat, this is because if it were not absent we would be talking about something similar to the ghost in the machine, in this case the ghost in the ink.

Uttering words is very similar to leaving a note. Both can lead to misunderstandings. Why is that? Precisely because there is an active part of the "medium", without this active part there would never be a possible misunderstanding. Medium transparency is an illusion you have invented. The possibility of misunderstanding proves otherwise. But in fact there are misunderstandings, ergo I am right. There is an independence of the medium that is active.

Again it's the medium. — Darkneos

The purpose here is absent because the absent of the autor and is partly a cause for misunderstanding. Because the interpretative power of a note by itself can be extremely variable. That is, you can interpret many things from the note. A person can say something to another person and still be misunderstood. Uttering words is like leaving a note on the refrigerator. There is some independence of the "medium" from the message. But this independence is active as I have shown.

The medium in a certain sense can betray the message and the author's intention. But the note as the words we utter imposes its conditions, there is no absolutely transparent medium, which means that there is an active role of the medium beyond the purpose and intention of the agent.

It's not and the mental contents are in the note that is why they wrote it, that's also how poetry works among other writing. The note is not alone or exerting anything, again just imagination. — Darkneos

Or because we just use the same language and understand each other. — Darkneos

You are doing nothing other than categorically denying what I state. But without argument.

That language we share is actively exposed in the note, but not by another person, because this one is absent. But as I said the note acts in the absence of its author, it acts in us who read and understand it. In part the note actively is its ordo cognoscendi, by its syntax, by the place in which it is found (a refrigerator), by its style, etc.

The purpose here is absent because the absent of the autor and is partly a cause for misunderstanding. Because the interpretative power of a note by itself can be extremely variable. That is, you can interpret many things from the note. A person can say something to another person and still be misunderstood. Uttering words is like leaving a note on the refrigerator. There is some independence of the "medium" from the message. But this independence is active as I have shown.

Then it is like when we say that from a given neuronal synapse we cannot deduce a thought.

If so, then there is no reduction and we must say that the sentence is "something more" than a thermodynamic value.

Not really no. The note is just the medium, it's someone else interacting with us. — Darkneos

That is in fact false. Because the mental contents are not in the note as a ghost in the letters. The note is alone and it is exerting a constraint on our language. That's why when you are asked why you interpret the way you interpret what the note says you actually have to show the note and say "the note says so". I maintain that it is because there is an active role of the note in the refrigerator. It is partly the reason why we understand what we understand. Partly because the subject also has an active role and both roles interact with each other.

That's just not factually correct. The formatted disk containing data has a lower entropy than a disk containing no information. And this is so regardless of the data having been interpreted. — Banno

But can you deduce a specific sentence from a given entropy value?

I don't think the note has an active role in anything, it's just a note. We know what it means because we know what the words mean. It's that simple. There is no selecting a use, it's just to communicate. — Darkneos

You are ignoring that the use we think we can make of the note is delimited by the note itself. It is like a command that interacts with us. And above all it is the reason why we understand a specific use and not any other. This is an active role that transcends the subjectivity of the subject and its intentionality. That is why the notion of use falls short, because the use is anchored to a subject, or to a way of life. Today with artificial intelligence we see more clearly how non-subjective sign systems interact with us.

If we see a note on a refrigerator according to our use of words we can understand what it says. However it should be noted that the note has an active role in us shaping our language and selecting the use we are going to give it. But here "giving a use" is misleading, since it seems that the subject is the one who has the only active role. However, we cannot explain our choice of word use other than from the note on the refrigerator. That is, the note has an active role in shaping the use. The role of the note is so active that in my opinion the idea of use is very restrictive to the subject. That is why I prefer to speak of transcription and of active non-subjective sign systems that interact with us.

I didn't say that the experience cannot be coherent. I said that it does not have the capacity to be coherent. I think I should have said that the experience does not have the capacity to be coherent on its own (I changed the OP accordingly). That follows from the definition of experience as a conscious event that is informative and coherent. An event is something that happens or takes place so its coherence cannot be due to itself but something else namely the object. — MoK

You say that experience is coherent because the object is coherent, but at the same time you accept that coherence is given from the subject. Which implies redundancy. Object coherence is no longer a criterion for inferring dualism of subtances, since that criterion is found in both subject and object don't You think?

Even if it's ontologically true that every psychological being is composed of quantum objects. — flannel jesus

But that is really the question. How can you talk about constituents without that being more than a naive intuition that cannot be carried out in scientific or philosophical practice, and above all that you cannot prove.

Well, then it does not explain this specific set of abstract principles. But don't you think that a fundamental and general ontology should explain them?

I doubt it. You have said: "you'll never be able to understand the abstract principles and general patterns of human psychology by speaking in terms of quantum fields, basically".

I didn't say you said that. Rather, I inferred it

The fundamental (foundationalism) is precisely what should be criticized if it is not an explanatory ontology. It would be better to maintain a pluralistic ontology from my point of view.

But Then this ontology is not an explanatory ontology. So if this ontology does not explain, I don't know what is the point of maintaining it.

psychology cannot be reduced to physics, but must nonetheless share a physical ontology. — SEP

I'm curious, what is the difference between physics and a physical ontology?

Yep. Describable, as you hint, in thermodynamic terms — Banno

And also, doesn't thermodynamics work with the heat produced by a system?

Where do you see the measurable heat (Motion of atoms and molecules) in a sentence like:

"The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog".

#1 C1 follows since the experience does not have the capacity to be coherent, given its definition — MoK

I think you refer to experience as a tabula rasa. But haven't you read Kant? the subject structures that which provides us with the senses. In that sense "coherence" is not given by the object, but in the interaction between the subject and the object. The subject is also active in the shaping of experience.

On what basis do you say that experience cannot be "coherent"? That requires a demonstration. For it makes much more sense to see experience as composed of forms of sensibility (space and time) and categories of the understanding. Otherwise experience would be chaos of stimuli.

The object can indirectly perceive its content, and that requires another substance to perceive the information and change accordingly, such that the object can then perceive the content of another substance. — MoK

The so-called qualia for example are the ways in which the subject interprets the stimuli given by the relationship with the object. We cannot say that objects have qualia, but that qualia are active interpretations of the subject.

That capability is fundamental to Aristotle's hylomorphism (matter-form dualism), which is very different to Descartes' matter-mind duality, because it depicts intellect (nous) more in terms of a capacity than as some ethereal 'thinking substance'. — Wayfarer

This reminds me of Kant's critique of the Cartesian cogito. Kant said that we cannot perceive ourselves except as phenomena and not as things in themselves. Not to mention that in Kant there is no treatment of the mind but a treatment of faculties. In that sense Kant is Aristotelian following what you are saying.

Is all this question about subtances a pre-Kantian discussion?

In many discussions of 'substance' in philosophy, this distinction is lost, leading to the question of what kind of 'substance' the mind might be, which is an absurd question. It is the fatal flaw in Cartesian dualism, one which Descartes himself could never answer. The mind is not a 'thinking thing' in any sense other than the metaphorical. Reducing it to a 'thinking substance' is an absurdity. (This is why Aristotle's matter-form dualism retains a plausibility that Cartesian dualism never exhibited.) — Wayfarer

I agree. Consciousness does not fit into what Aristotle called Ousia. In fact in his writings on time Aristotle stated that beings (Ousia) are not in time and exclude it. Another approach is needed that considers the temporality of consciousness as something that constitutes it. If the being of consciousness is closely related to temporality it is difficult to understand why we are still speaking in Aristotelian language.

As you may have noticed I talk about something that works rather than something being true and false. In any example you give we can make the conversion: For example when you speak of a placebo pill, it does not act objectively like a non-placebo pill, they are simply different ways of working. Here the pill is a sign that is introduced in a certain context that gives it all its significance, this is transcription, in the cases that you would believe that there is a falsehood of the placebo pill what there is in reality a different functioning. Like the psychological which is a different context of transcription than the physiological.

Encoding something is but one step in transcription. As I say this requires a use of signs where the space and time assigned to the sign takes place. But of representation there is nothing, since there is no sense or meaning that travels with the physical signs, and to the extent of that is that we cannot speak of representation but of the effects that produces an encoded message in another person, moreover the very notion of message is problematic, since there is no message until there is decoding. But decoding is nothing more than introducing a system of signs in a context, another system of signs, which gives it a meaning.

Correctness? No, it works. Once we abandon the idea of representation something can work well or it can work badly according to our expectations. Like a broken clock; the clock is a system of signs that produces a meaning, but we transcribe it into our language with which we have expectations no longer that the time is correct but that it works according to different contexts, such as world time. Is there representation between a clock and world time? No, each one is a different context and what we believe to be representation is tuning, a matter of time, which we associate with expectations such as the arrival of a train.

Theory of knowledge? This approach denies epistemology, since epistemology is from end to end based on the idea of representation. But in reality it gives us an idea of how the world works without this idea. Above all it gives us the idea that the world doesn't really change much for practical purposes. The only thing that really changes is the work of philosophers who believe in the idea of representation as true and talk about things like right and wrong.

You propose transcription as an alternative to representation – but how can a transcription be true or false if it explicitly rejects the notion of representing something external? — DasGegenmittel

And what does transcription look like linguistically? Since any form of language already implies differentiation, structure, and thus representation, how can transcription escape this? Isn’t every linguistic expression already a form of representation? — DasGegenmittel

It is like when the phenomenon of translation occurs. It simply works and does its job [to make us understand each other] here the transcription is given by the relationship between two sign systems, places, distances, times and tempos are assigned between the signs in such a way that both languages become the version of the other transformed, transcribed.

Another example is communication. When a person communicates something to a second person he is actually causing an effect on this second person by structuring his language in such a way that understanding takes place. But there is no representation, there are only causes and effects. To communicate something to someone is to cause an effect in another person. It is no longer a matter of representing to ourselves what the other thinks, but of determining ourselves as the other, thinking as the other, to the extent that our language is configured and determined by the words of another person.

The word transcription is a host of genetic transcription, but I generalize it to ontology.

But once we begin forming concepts, things become imprecise—and I agree with that. However, I don’t think it’s enough to rely solely on experience, because it doesn’t allow us to sufficiently anticipate how the world is to be understood. Only by digitizing the world into concepts can we make predictions about things not yet encountered. We can’t think the world 1:1 in all its atoms, nor perceive it that way in everyday or scientific practice. I hope I’ve captured the core of your thought. — DasGegenmittel

When we think of imprecision we still have the idea of knowledge as a representation of reality, that is to say, as similarity. But I take a different approach to the matter, since the idea of representation entails problems like the one you have pointed out.

However, we can think in another way. We can think of our relation to the world as the relation of a translator to a different language. Translation is never a representation but a transcription. It is a matter of places and times that are structured in the language of arrival from the times, places, distances, tempos, etc. of the language of departure. The source language is the world. Each translation does not try to reflect something of what is translated but imposes its own structure.

Consequently, it is no longer a question of the clock surpassing us and surpassing our concepts, but rather that our concepts irremediably, like any translation, do not represent anything other than converting it into something, hence the usefulness of the notion of transcription. We transcribe what the clock says, but this transcription is a completely different world. But fluid and changing, just like our clock. Our concepts are also fluid and changing because they are transcriptions such that if we could watch the time to the rhythm of the clock our thinking would change ceaselessly along with the clock.

We must ask ourselves if there is something as fixed and stable knowledge that is not changing as a "real time" transcription changes. So imprecision is not something proper and essential to the concept, but something relative like our physical impossibility to follow the clock in real time. But our knowledge is indeed something changeable like our clock, only that it differs in tempo, as a transcription can be made in real time or in delayed time. Thus the difference is not between being and becoming, but difference of becomings.

Every perception—even when enhanced by technological means—is only an approximation of reality — DasGegenmittel

This is precisely the idea that I criticize. If we abandon the idea that we are trying to represent reality faithfully, the matter becomes something very different. Science can no longer be conceived as knowledge but as technique. A human technique that, as I have said, constitutes synthetic identities. That is, as a device of reality that can function or not. Here to function means to be in continuity with reality but no longer in a representative sense of our beliefs but in a sense of fitting or adjustment. So a truth is not something that is discovered but that is produced, truth is the synthetic identity where different courses of action converge and resonate with each other, as a well-adjusted device.

The point is that truth as representation or correspondence has many failures to keep pace with reality. In any case we are still restricted to the subject-object division. That is why I advocate the construction of knowledge as working with reality. A truth is not something you discover or think about or believe in. But in a very different way it is something that is constructed. The subjective part should not be taken as the epicenter from which knowledge is constructed. If we take scientific work as an example we are actually working with reality constructing synthetic identities in which theories, phenomena, operations and relations converge in the same flow of human action in a harmonic way so to speak.

Scientific work also works with possibilities, but the scientist believes that what is represented in the imagination is going to happen. This implies that one thinks in possibilities precisely because the becoming is not given. The fact that the becoming is not given is the opportunity to be right or wrong in predictions. But a prediction is never a given. They are ontologically different things.


We would have to say the opposite of what You say (ad consecuentiam btw) that the fact that becoming is not given is that which obliges us to do science with the difference that we must believe in the uniformity of nature, but this is a belief that can never be confirmed universally, because becoming is never given. No matter how many experiments we do, the possibility of failure is always there. It is a possibility, like that of succeeding in our predictions.

I think you have missed my point. If you tell me that there is a deterministic system that will end up in X state you are making a prediction. But if the system is not in its state X the system prediction cannot be confused with reality. That is, the prediction is a representation not reality itself. The prediction is one possibility among others, even if it is confirmed. And this is due to the non-givenness of becoming. We could only be absolute determinists if all the processes of reality were already given. But that is not the case. No matter how many experiments you do, predictions will always be imagined representations of what will happen, i.e. possibilities among others. And reality will always be in a state of not-given. Basically This is the problem of inducción.

The existence of possibilities is that which follows from the fact that any course of action is not given in advance. That is, that in a sense the world is always in play. No matter how well our expectations or predictions are fulfilled there is always something not given in becoming. We can foresee that the sun will die in X years, but nevertheless it is not given. To the extent that there is something not given, thought is able to think of possibilities, there is always something left over that escapes prediction.

The determinist has to explain how the future is given. But that is something that cannot be done, since predictions are always possibilities and are representations of becoming. How does a prediction turn out to be true? Even if it turns out to be true, it is still a representation of becoming and not becoming itself. That is why we cannot say that things are determined, because they are only determined in the representation but not in becoming itself.

They are simply words that remind us that there is no ultimate metalanguage that serves to describe language. It is the same with the word "metaphor". You define it in a non-metaphorical sense and there is a contradiction in what it is to speak metaphorically and to define metaphor, that is, you betray its meaning. This implies that there is no metalanguage of definitions valid for all cases. Moreover, when we believe we have a metalanguage we use it as any other way of speaking that you can also define in another metalanguage of a higher order; and so on ad infinitum. That is, there is no ultimate metalanguage from which to define all aspects (or being) of language.

But not simply in our minds. but, as it were, ideas extend their existence beyond the mind, reaching the minds of other people, books, recordings, hieroglyphics, etc. In that sense they are extramental things, insofar as they transcend or transcend the finitude of our mind. This is because their being is always contextualized. That is to say, their being depends on the relation with other things, and these relations as relations between signifiers extend their reality beyond the mind, contextualizing it. Think of how many times a book has given you an idea, or the words of another person, a painting, etc. This means that ideas are contextualized in and by an extramental world.

The idea of sign to which I refer is that of "being in the place of something else ready to be interpreted by a context". So you can understand ideas as a kind of sign. For example when you think of rain there is a representation in which you can think of that object rain: you think of clouds, lightning, umbrellas and other things that are not directly present that nevertheless give meaning to that idea and not only that but constitute it.

Without this possibility of the sign (that of being in place of something else...) ideas could not be transmitted. But above all, it is thanks to this that it achieves the characteristic ideality of the idea: its repetition. Be it in someone else's head, in writing, in an archive, in a painting, in a paper, in our world, etc. For example if you think of an idea that another person gave you, that idea is present in your mind but it is no longer present in the mind of the other person.

When I say that ideas are material, I do not mean that they are physical, but a third option between the mental and the physical that respects the identity of each one. And this is provided by the idea of sign. An idea is a meaning that has a relation to other meanings, according to which it is itself a signifier. And this makes it possible to understand something as the language in which you transmit ideas to other people. If the idea did not exist as a sign within a system of signs we could not speak of transmission from one person to another (since in Communication you are being affected by the signs of another person). Moreover, the fact that an idea belongs to a system of signs ensures its ideality (that it is something that persists even beyond the subject who thinks it). In this sense ideas are as material as any sound within the transmission of ideas) but not in a physicalist sense, but in a very different sense.

Ideas unfold in the world. When we think of an idea transmitted by language for example. Since there is a relation to signifiers the idea itself becomes a signifier within a chain of referral. It is necessary to explain how the idea is related to sound, the extension of language and the relation of representation (for example the relation to pixels on a screen). This explanation can only be carried out if the idea and its representation are part of the same system of signs. This implies that the idea is not enclosed in the head but that literally the world is made of ideas unfolding, our world, but the idea is something necessarily material, if by material we understand the finiteness of the sign, its appearance, its action and reaction, its contact, its causality, its transformation, its difference, etc....

There is an interesting interpretation based on the temporality in which subjectivity unfolds. It refers to the absolute novelty of the future now that becomes the present. This absolute novelty makes the non-present now constitutive of subjectivity. Is this not what the other has always meant, another perception as another absolute now? This would restore the possibility of another subjectivity as equally originary.

“The now is not a point but a continuity that is always in transition.” (Lectures on Time-Consciousness)